


Light Our Own Fires

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Demisexual Character, Jossed, M/M, PTSD, Recovery, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-02
Updated: 2010-09-02
Packaged: 2017-10-11 10:25:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock won't give up looking for Moriarty; John is losing patience. Neither of them are coping as well as they would like. Post for 1.03, more details in notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light Our Own Fires

**Author's Note:**

> This starts about two months after 1.03 and assumes an explosion which didn't manage to kill any of the three main players. I'll leave the BBC to sort that part out.
> 
> Content notes for: injuries and recovery, PTSD, one not very explicit sex scene, a few instances of strong language. If anything else strikes you as needing to be tagged, do please let me know. Also if you have any concerns with how anything is portrayed. Concrit is always welcome.

John has severe burns spread mostly over his back and his left side, as well as a new ragged scar on his thigh. Sherlock has to have two bullets removed, and two matching sets of reconstructive surgery. Hip and shoulder and it's touch and go how much movement he will regain but Sherlock is stubborn or maybe Moriarty's shooters weren't as good as he thought. Maybe they were exactly that good.

It's two months later and John doesn't know how much of his limp is still psychosomatic. Sherlock appears to be trying to will his away by sheer bloody-mindedness. It's not working.

There's a clatter downstairs and John knows that by the time he gets there, Sherlock will have pulled himself onto the sofa and be pretending that his body didn't betray him in one way or another. Leg didn't give up beneath him, hand didn't lose grip at the wrong time. That's another thing, recently. Sherlock has been fairly impenetrable for as long as John's known him. But lately he won't slow down enough to let even John try and guess what he's thinking.

John still goes downstairs to check on him. "Okay?" he asks.

"What? Yes." Sherlock is lying back against the sofa, staring up at the ceiling. He's not moving, which lately means he's thinking, and about Moriarty in particular. He doesn't pace now, when he's thinking about that. John wonders how many cases, precisely, Sherlock has lost.

"Fancy a cup of tea?"

Sherlock doesn't acknowledge the question.

John notes the plastic kettle lying on its side on the floor in the kitchen. That's what the noise was, then.

"Look, are we ever going to _talk_ about this?" John asks. "I've done this bit before, you know. Sort of. I might be able to-."

Sherlock starts to violently scratch at his violin. He doesn't have the control he wants, and there is a second – just a second – where his anger breaks across his face and he lifts the instrument like he might throw it across the room.

John takes hold of the neck. He puts the violin down carefully and sits across from Sherlock. "Or we could watch TV. Or I can watch TV, and you can think. Whatever suits."

Sherlock's expression clears and he goes back to ignoring John. Coward, John thinks. I'm such a bloody coward.

 

* * *

Sherlock is aware that he does not meet with the standards of what other people would call normality. Or sanity, perhaps, if they are feeling conceptually uncertain. Insanity implies an unsteady grip on the real world. Sherlock thinks he sees the real world more clearly than most people could stand.

But he looks across at the clock and only then discovers that he has been lying here for two hours. He didn't mean to do that.

John is asleep in the chair. He is snoring lightly, in the manner of one who didn't stop to think before laying down his head. It bobs forwards, towards his chest, and Sherlock is surprised he hasn't woken himself up already. Perhaps he has, when Sherlock wasn't looking, and decided he didn't care for comfort. Sherlock, it is true, will often curl up on the sofa rather than his bed, in case he needs to get back to work in a hurry. But he doesn't know what John thinks he must keep such vigilant watch over. They have no case, and John has no patients.

There is a noise in the kitchen and Sherlock jumps. It only takes a moment to put the sound together with the straightened papers and the smell of tea brewing. But he's standing now, for some reason, without having made up his mind to do so. There is a poker in Sherlock's hand, and it shakes.

Mrs Hudson calls, "Anything wrong, dear?"

John wakes quickly. His gaze finds Sherlock first, and then the noise, and then Sherlock again. He says, "You might try knocking a little louder, next time, Mrs Hudson."

She grumbles peaceably about John's poor manners, when all she's doing is lending a hand, not that she's thanked for it. Sherlock is surprised too – John is naturally polite, and anyway he has long moved past expecting normal rules to apply in their lodging. Mrs Hudson walks in and out of their flat without knocking but she also lets Sherlock run experiments in her saucepans. John knows this.

There is a tugging at his hand. John takes the poker from him. "You have time for a chat?" he asks.

Why is Sherlock still standing there? He shakes John's hand off. "No. I have to go out. Talk to Mrs Hudson."

 

* * *

This isn't a war zone. John knows this. He thinks, in fact, that in many ways he is coping much better now than he was immediately after his discharge. But this isn't a war zone and he still thinks he's about to be shot in the back. It doesn't feel like paranoia, just the slow creep of someone watching him from the shadows.

He mentions this to Sarah, and instead of laughing it off, she agrees with him. He's suddenly glad that they have stopped whatever it was that they were almost doing. She's a friend, and they still go out for drinks, but she's not the target. They're watching the surgery, not her house.

John walks home, and the prickling sensation at the back of his neck never goes away. He locks the doors with more care than usual, and finds himself going back to check them again.

"It's not safe, you know," John says.

"What isn't?" Sherlock is looking at a letter with a magnifying glass.

"Our staying here."

"Mrs Hudson-."

"Would be a damn sight better off without two lodgers with a price on their heads."

"That's a little dramatic. And he wouldn't be so prosaic as to simply pay a hit man. This is personal."

"I know it's fucking personal, Sherlock. I think- I think there was someone following me to the surgery today."

Sherlock doesn't look up from the paper. "Probably. He's had someone outside the flat all day. He's been sending notes." He flips the page in John's direction, to demonstrate, and goes back to studying it.

John stares out of the window. He can't see anyone now but that doesn't mean- he snatches the paper from Sherlock's hands. "Did you tell the police about this?"

"Who? Lestrade? If I thought there was any chance they could do anything about it, I would tell them."

"Would you?" he demands. "Really?"

"What do you-?"

"When you saw me that night. You thought it was me. The other player in your game, beside you the whole time. It was just for a moment, not long. But I could see it." He could see it in Sherlock's eyes, in the little exhale through barely parted lips. The thought that he had been deceived, wrong-footed by John of all people.

"You were offended?" Sherlock asks. He doesn't sound especially concerned by the possibility.

John feels his hands tearing at the paper. "I couldn't decide whether to be offended or flattered. You listen when he talks. I've never been more interesting to you than he was talking through my mouth."

Sherlock takes the paper back. "He would follow us," he says, as though John hadn't spoken. "He's too clever." There is a small pause. "If I left, he would follow me. He only cares about you so far as you pertain to me. I could leave."

"But you won't," John says. Honestly compels him to add, "and if you did, I would go with you." Sherlock is clever and can be ruthless too, but it wouldn't be enough. John doesn't want to hear of his death from someone else, when a body washes up somewhere. (Sherlock, John thinks, believes Moriarty would have something more dramatic than that in mind for him. John suspects that once Sherlock was dead, his body would have no more interest to Moriarty than as evidence to be disposed of.)

"Exactly," Sherlock says. "So we might as well stay here." That seems to be the end of that.

 

* * *

John makes significance of insignificant things. Sherlock knows this. It had been a moment of weakness. If he had thought about it, as he would have, without the distractions Moriarty had set up, he would have known that it couldn't be John. Not for sentimental reasons, but for reasons of pure practicality. Even with hordes of accomplices, there was no way John could have been the one to orchestrate all of that, not while working with Sherlock as well.

So it is foolish for John to make so much from it: Sherlock's moment of hesitation, an idea he would normally have brushed aside before it registered on his face. But Sherlock's mind is held hostage to his human body, which reacts poorly to threats. The physiological response to danger cannot entirely be overridden by thinking logically about it.

(Neither can memory. The way Sherlock's brain makes connections he doesn't mean. John holding himself absolutely steady until he thought it was over. Shaking against the wall of the swimming pool, and still trying to calm Sherlock down.)

Sherlock does not know how to reassure John because Sherlock is not sentimental. Beautiful women and damaged children have committed the same crimes as the long-term criminal element. Moriarty had been a child when he killed Carl Powers; Sherlock had been a child when he would have caught him. The world does not obey the tender feelings of the public.

Moriarty had been watching Sherlock long before Sherlock knew he existed. Sherlock is not sentimental. He is flattered by the attention, no matter what quarter it comes from. His fingers trace over the latest words: _my ears were ringing for days after that explosion. How was it for you?_ There are things about ourselves we can't control, even when we try. Sherlock's hands shake.

 

* * *

Ella had been surprised when he called, but she's good at hiding that sort of thing. She says, "It's good to hear from you, John. Yes, of course I can fit you in this week."

When he's sitting in front of her, he doesn't know what to say. It had seemed important, when he called her. He hadn't been drunk, or lying awake. It had been the middle of a Monday afternoon, and he had been watching Sherlock reading the papers. It had been so quiet, and it had become very important that he find someone speak to someone outside of all of this.

Ella says, "Would you like to talk about what happened? I know you were in hospital again."

John has told the story so many times now – to the police, Molly, Harry and Sherlock – that there's nothing about it that can upset him. He's distant from the narration, it had been someone else set upon by a gang of men in masks, someone else who had Moriarty whispering vile things in their ear, someone else who Sherlock had focussed on in shock.

He tells her all of this. Once he would have left the last parts out. But he is running out of people to talk to – Harry would worry and Sherlock wouldn't understand why worrying is the appropriate response.

John is increasingly convinced that he's going to die violently. Not _today_ necessarily, it's just that a peaceful death doesn't seem to be in his future. And that doesn't bother him. _That_ bothers him. So he tells Ella

She keeps her expression neutral when she asks, "do you think about death a lot, John?"

"What, mine? When I'm being shot at, I suppose. Or rather, afterwards. During the being shot at part I tend to have other things to think about."

"Like Sherlock."

He sighs. "Everyone always- it's not all about Sherlock. There are things you can do on autopilot, yeah? Making a cup of tea, brushing your teeth, writing your patient notes, for all I know."

"John."

"I don't _think_ when I'm in a situation like that. I do what needs to be done, and I think about it afterwards."

"And that bothers you?"

"Do you think it should?" he counters. "You're the one who thinks Sherlock is a bad influence."

"I didn't say that."

John laughs. "You don't need to."

Ella lowers her notebook to her knees. It could be a test – John doesn't look at it. She says, "Do you feel better, since you met him? Happier?"

John doesn't know. He doesn't think about it that way very often. He has less time to think, with Sherlock. He supposes that could be close enough to happiness.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock knows that John has gone back to his therapist. He is more furtive about that then he is about any other woman in his life. And then John will pretend that he is not embarrassed about it, which is the part Sherlock finds marginally more noteworthy. There is a conflict between what John thinks and what he knows he should think.

"What did she tell you this time?" Sherlock asks, as John throws his coat onto the chair.

John pauses for only a moment. "She says I should move out of here and get away from your bad influence."

If this was true, John would be aiming his frustration at her and Sherlock in equal measure, and he wouldn't be making a joke of it. So Sherlock says, "Really?"

"No."

"I didn't think so. That would be much too interesting. She just listens, doesn't she? What is the appeal in that?"

John kicks his shoes across the room in a display of petulance. "What? Someone who's obliged to listen when you talk, no matter what nonsense you come out with? I don't know, Sherlock, why don't you tell me?"

"I don't oblige you to listen."

"No," John says. "Of course not."

"I can tell when you're attempting sarcasm, you know."

John throws himself into the chair. He winces; the damage from the burns hasn't completely healed. He says, "But you can't tell when I'm asking you to tell me something."

"I don't-."

"Why don't you show me what you just put away?

Sherlock looks at his hands. He had pushed the papers into the desk. John wouldn't have wanted to see them.

John says, "You know Lestrade calls _me_ when you make off with evidence."

"He shouldn't leave it out in the open."

"Sherlock."

"It's information I need to know."

"You're obsessed! And it's not because you want the police to arrest him, it's because you want to find him first."

"Obviously," Sherlock says. "I can't trust them with this."

"It's not about…"

Sherlock wonders at John's firm belief that he knows Sherlock's thoughts without having them told to him. He maintains, so often, that he has no idea what's going on in Sherlock's head.

John is staring at him. "It's about him." He shakes his head. "Him, Moriarty. Whatever he said to you, or did. I don't know why I thought- what would I need to do, to make you let this go?"

"John."

"I know it's not enough to just ask. To tell you that you're chasing a ghost and it would be safer for us both if you never caught him. It won't do any good. I'm not him. I could sit like patience on a bloody monument, listening to you talk for the rest of time, and you'd still be looking for more. Skull's not enough stimulation. You need something to chase, and you've already got me."

Sherlock raises his eyebrow. "Shakespeare, John? Really?"

That, of all things, is what John reacts to. He stalks across the room, glaring. "I do _read_, Sherlock."

"I know that."

"More than you, probably. What are words to the relative composition of the soils of London parks?"

"Literature – _real_ literature – has a habit of sticking to the brain. Regardless of how much useful space it's taking up. I blame the public school education."

"'Horror drifted away'," John says, a test. "'Everyone was a bird, and the song was wordless'."

"Sassoon," Sherlock tells him. "That one was less surprising. Would you like to try again?"

"'If equal affection cannot be-.'"

"Auden," Sherlock says. "'-let the more loving one be me'. An odd sentiment for a love poem, as I am assured that it is."

John still looks unfathomably angry. Sherlock's lack of knowledge of the solar system had baffled John (so now theories of heliocentrism sit in Sherlock's brain alongside other eradicable knowledge he does not need) but it hadn't made him angry. Sherlock doesn't know why these fragments of vestigial information are bothering him so. The occasional classical allusion is certainly more useful than many of the other facts John has insisted are 'general knowledge'.

John sighs. "What would I have to do," he repeats, "to make you stop chasing after Moriarty? How much more interesting would I need to be?"

That's not what it's about at all, but Sherlock doesn't know how to explain that to John. He needs John at his side and Moriarty in the distance. John doesn't understand that.

 

* * *

 

John pretends that it doesn't feel like a betrayal – calling Mycroft without Sherlock's knowledge. It shouldn't - Sherlock has done as much and worse to him without thinking twice.

John expects Mycroft to hold it over his head, to demand something. He doesn't. He says, "Meet me at my office at nine." Anthea isn't there, and it is Mycroft who leads John down and down through dark government corridors. He says, "He will find out, you know."

"Yes," John says, "I know." He can't care. This is more important than Sherlock's offence.

Sherlock does find him, of course. The third week in – he's still distracted. He hears the sound of Sherlock's not quite even footfall coming down the corridor just before the door opens.

John fires one last shot into the target and puts the gun carefully aside. "Sherlock," he says.

Sherlock holds something out to him. "I was left a note."

John looks at the picture of himself walking into this building. He doesn't remember looking quite so furtive. On the back is written: _Oh dear, who can you trust nowadays? Big brother and best mate in cahoots. I'm only thinking of your best interests, my dear. Thought you should know. M x_

Sherlock's lips are pressed together and he's not quite meeting John's eyes. It makes it easier to stare at him and say, "What?"

"Why would you-?"

"Why do you think?"

"You went to my brother – my _brother_ – because you wanted to play soldier again? Am I _boring you_, John?"

He's spitting John's words back at him. It's one of those rare occasions that Sherlock is so completely wrong that John can't think what to do with it. "What?"

"Why else would you want to- all of this?"

"Why would I want to make sure that I'm in practice the next time I need to fire a gun? Some of us don't want to use the wall as a target, and I'm less likely to get arrested if I'm here on your brother's say-so."

Sherlock says, "Why _now_?"

"Because if you won't give up chasing him, then I need to be ready to kill him."

"John-."

"Next time I see him, it ends. If I had got him last time…"

"You tried. You would have had him if it wasn't for the other shooters."

"Or if you had ran."

"If I had ran," Sherlock says, "you would have been dead."

"And so would he. I would have taken him with me and you wouldn't-."

"What, John."

"This is _burning you up_. Can you not see that? He's already got you. If this is what I need to- next time, I'll do what has to be done." John is not a killer, though he sometimes has to remind himself of that. It has never been premeditated. This is. Every target he sees has Moriarty's smirking face. He needs to be able to do it without thinking.

Sherlock's fingers are twisting in his pockets. He says, "It wasn't your fault."

"No," John says, quietly. "It was yours. You called him out to the pool, you went to meet him, and that's why he grabbed me. You walked right into it and I followed you."

Sherlock doesn't speak. He turns on his heel and leaves John alone. John lifts the gun. Headshot. Headshot. Headshot.

 

* * *

 

They haven't spoken much in the past few days. But Lestrade calls at the flat in the morning and when Sherlock stands up to go with him, John follows. Sherlock has an unconscious moment where everything feels back in its place, and a conscious moment where he wonders if he should be surprised or if he should protest. He doesn't know the etiquette for these situations.

Lestrade asks, "Should the pair of you really be-? I can get the reports over here instead."

Sherlock sniffs. "And leave your people to decide what's important?"

"You don't really look like you should be at a crime scene."

Sherlock looks down at himself. He is dressed as he normally is.

Lestrade laughs. "You're still favouring the leg, I meant. And John-."

"John is fine," John observes testily. "Sherlock would be fine if he bothered turning up to his physical therapy. Now are we going to have a look at this scene or not?"

They follow behind Lestrade in another car. It pulls up in front of an old building, decrepit, with the crime scene on the seventh floor. Lestrade may not have been wrong about Sherlock's leg. John is leaning on his cane, which he has started carrying again. Sherlock is convinced that the limp, at least, is still mostly psychosomatic, but other problems remain.

It's cold up here – there's no glass in any of the windows and the wind whips through the room. Sherlock shivers once and then puts the thought out of his mind. There are two bodies here, slashed open.

Lestrade points to one of them. "He's the missing pilot. You saw the news?"

"Hmm. Yes. Well that's interesting."

"Really?"

"No, not really. It does clarify a few things."

He walks over to the second body. There's something wrong with one of the floorboards and he trips. John is there in a moment, catching Sherlock's elbow. Sherlock detangles himself as soon as he has his footing back.

He would not describe the pain in his leg as 'shooting' because that would be inaccurate. (See also 'stabbing' and 'biting'.) It hurts, that's all. But he doesn't have the time. Sherlock walks around the body.

John is watching him. "Sherlock."

"What?"

"Take the cane."

"I don't need it." His voice sounds strange to his own ears: a hitch in his breath.

"Yes, you really do," John says.

"I think I'm the best judge of what I-."

"Do you really want to go there?"

"Nevertheless, I don't want it."

"I don't _care_ if you don't want it," John says. "Take it anyway, before you fall over and really do some damage."

Sherlock suspects that most of the damage has already been done. He bends down to examine the marks on the victim's hands. John blocks his line of sight, pushing the cane at him. "I said no," Sherlock says.

When he looks up, John has pinched his mouth tight. John says, "I can't- I'm so fucking sick of this. How do you expect-? If you never let me-?" He stops and starts again. "Sherlock, take the damn cane, or take my arm, or else I swear I-."

"What? You'll what?" Sherlock is genuinely curious. The officers are too. John so seldom raises his voice, and never in front of the police. John is polite, and respectful of authority, and this definitely falls under 'causing a scene'. Sherlock is angry too, of course, but he pushes that to one side along with the pain. The way he is being watched as well, not just John, suggests that he is doing a bad job with one or both of those.

John closes his eyes. "The only thing," he says, "the only thing that might even make you notice, would be me saying I'll leave." He's whispering now, and Sherlock notes the change as distantly as he notes the jolt in his own heartbeat. John says, "but then you wouldn't believe me, would you?"

Once, possibly, Sherlock might have let it be an experiment. People are always threatening things they have no intention of doing. John's one subject is too small for statistical analysis, but he would do as a case study.

Now, though, Sherlock reaches across the space between them and snatches the cane from John's grip. They don't speak to each other again that day. He will not encourage John to hold himself hostage.

 

* * *

 

Harry sits across from him in the too-bright coffee shop, and frowns. "John." She's carefully made-up and nicely-dressed, and she looks better than the last time he saw her. Of course, that had been in the hospital, and she had been crying.

John looks back at her. "What?"

"You called me, little brother." It's a tease, designed to annoy him. She was always good at that, though in the last few years they haven't bothered much to put the effort in. Not when they can hurt each other just as quickly without the trouble of meaning it.

"Harry, can we just- talk, maybe?

"You know I hear more about what you're doing from your blog than I do from talking to you?"

"Can we not do this now?"

She holds onto the coffee cup and watches him over the top of it. "You look worse."

"Thank you, Harry."

"Is it him? Or are the dreams back?"

"I have a therapist, you know."

"And yet you called me. So talk."

"Sometimes I don't think you like me very much."

"Sometimes I know you don't like me at all. But I'm your sister and I love you, so spill. I've been sticking to coffee all day, and I am all ears."

John exhales. "I don't know what he wants."

"Sherlock."

John is about to say 'yes, of course, Sherlock,' when it occurs that he might at least try and make a show of having other things on his mind. He waits too long and ends up saying, "What? Yes. Him."

"You're _hopeless_," she sighs. "Absolutely hopeless. You wake up in the hospital after bullet wounds and explosions and skin grafts and the first thing you said was his name. But God forbid you actually talk to him. This is why I stick to women."

He doesn't mean to laugh. "I don't think that's why."

"Well, no. But the point stands. Talk to the man and find out what he wants."

The problem is that talking to Sherlock does not necessarily yield useful results. Sometimes it only brings more confusion. Talking would help if Sherlock thought like other people, or if he reacted to trauma like other people. If John could say 'I was scared, you were scared too, and that's okay' then they might be able to get somewhere. As it is, there is only John's imperfect understanding of what Sherlock may or not be thinking when he refuses to talk.

Harry comes around to his side of the table. They don't hug, really; they weren't raised like that. She wraps one arm round his shoulders and leans her head against his. She whispers, "You could leave. If he's making you this- you could leave. I know you don't want to come live with me but it wouldn't need to be for long."

"I can't." That's what it comes down to in the end. He can threaten, and Sherlock can pretend to believe him, but they both know he's not going anywhere. They're too tangled in each other now, for better or worse, so even if John left he would always be wondering. He will stay, and wonder about other things instead.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock can tell that John isn't sleeping. He turns up in the living room at three a.m. and sits there with his laptop, not writing anything. When Sherlock points this out, John notes that Sherlock isn't sleeping either.

"I never sleep. Waste of time."

"Biological necessity," John counters.

"Then why are you here?"

John looks more put out than he should be at a simple question. He taps idly at the keys of the laptop for a little while and says, "Maybe I thought company would help."

Sherlock raises his eyebrow. John frequently complains that he gets more small talk from the television than he does from Sherlock. He says, "And is it?"

"No," John says, with an uncomfortable smile. "I didn't really think it would."

"So why-?"

"You're not restful to be around," John says, although it doesn't appear to be an answer to the question he was asked. "Especially lately. With everything that… Moriarty, and the cases and… I don't know how to act around you. I don't know what's going to set you off - make you stop talking for days, or start shooting the walls again."

There's a particular note - resignation, Sherlock thinks. An ending. He had thought one was coming. Has thought so for months, though it's been slow in coming. He says, "Why do you stay, then?"

John looks across at him. "Harry asked me that."

"And?"

"I'm lonely when I'm with you," John says. "But it's worse when I'm not." It sounds as though it should be angry, like an accusation, but John's expression doesn't turn that way. He looks… unhappy, Sherlock thinks. And then rethinks, because John has already provided him with that answer. Lonely.

(Lestrade had looked puzzled when Sherlock asked him how he thought John was doing. Lestrade said, "He looks like a man waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I never know with the pair of you. I can never tell who's winning – I hoped you knew." Sherlock has been making an extensive study of John's recovery but he still doesn't know. He had assumed John knew this part.)

"Do you know what happens when I go to sleep?" Sherlock asks.

"Oh, the end of the world, I'm sure, without Sherlock Holmes to keep an eye on things." John is frustrated, not truly angry, but he runs his hand over his head.

"I dream," Sherlock says. "I dream of you, counting backwards from ten." He bites his lip to keep the confession in, too late.

John stares. "Sherlock."

"I can't help, John, if you're lonely. But that's why I don't sleep." He has nothing more to offer, so returns to silence. After a minute or two, John goes back to bed. Sherlock wonders what he dreams about: the explosion, or the parts on either side of it.

 

* * *

 

John comes home after work (Sarah has finally decided he's fit enough to take a few shifts) and goes to the fridge. There is a note stuck to the door: _There are fingers on the second shelf. Also mould samples in the egg carton. SH_

John is walking to the other room to upbraid Sherlock – again – for not buying a medical cooler and for using their kitchen as a lab. Then the other thought occurs. Sherlock has never bothered to warn him before.

Sherlock looks at him. "Hello," he says cautiously.

"Hello. Did you want to get take-away then? Or shall we go out?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Since the fridge is full of God-knows-what."

"Fingers," Sherlock says. "And mould. Though not _full_ exactly. Just the usual amount."

The usual amount. John swipes the thought aside. Sherlock is trying to compromise, for John's sake. That has to mean something. Something tied together with dreams, and hidden notes, and the way Sherlock watches him when he thinks John isn't looking. "Let's go out," John says. "I could do with some air."

"You were just outside."

"Maybe I could do with a chat, then."

It's teetering awfully close to the last time they had this conversation. Sherlock looks towards his desk, where he's keeping the Moriarty evidence. The police are still nowhere with the investigation, John knows. He hasn't asked Sherlock about his recent progress.

"Not about that," John says. "Unless you want to…?"

"No, no," Sherlock says. "We can do- normal people go out and talk about normal things. Not work. Or murders. Didn't you tell me that once?"

"We can talk about whatever you want," John says. "But let's not make the mistake of calling ourselves normal people."

Sherlock is surprised into laughter, and it carries them through a bubble of an unspoiled evening. They go out for pasta where the waiter (Sherlock's friend) clearly thinks they're a couple and John cannot see the point in correcting him. They have a three-hour disagreement about books which lasts them through to the after-dinner coffee. In the darkness of the walk back, Sherlock threads his arm through John's and they hold each other up.

 

* * *

 

Lestrade has given up offering to bring the crime scene to them, after the last five refusals. They follow him out to the scene. There's a man there, the partner of the missing woman. He may be useful for context later but for the moment Sherlock wants the pure evidence. He ignores the man.

Sherlock starts talking through the scene – no blood, no apparent theft, minimum disruption to the room. He would doubt that she had been taken at all, were it not for the detail of the hairbrush.

Lestrade is saying 'consultant', which refocuses Sherlock's attention, like hearing your name from across a crowded room. He listens more closely.

The victim's partner is making demands: _why don't you know, why aren't you looking, haven't you already done this?_

"You have a panic room," Sherlock says. "Why?"

His head jerks towards Sherlock. "What?"

"The panic room. Why do you have one and why wouldn't she use it?"

"Caroline's father left her a lot of money. And the house. She doesn't like it but…"

Sherlock sweeps the rest of the words away. "Yes, fine. And the photograph?"

"What about the-?"

"She took them, yes?" Sherlock says, looking along the shelves. "There's something-yes."

"How is this going to help find her?"

"It might not," Sherlock admits. "I haven't decided yet."

He looks around because the other end of the interrogation has gone silent. "Do you have _any idea_ what it's like?" the man asks eventually. The edge in his voice makes Sherlock's head hurt. "To have someone else be your whole world, the only person that matters?"

"Yes, yes, of course," Sherlock says, "but about her photography habit-."

"And would you just let that go?" he demands. "Someone trying to take that away from you?"

"I'm _not_ letting it go," Sherlock replies, gritting his teeth. "But right now, I'm trying to deal with your problem, so if we could get back to that, I'll work on mine later. "

John is looking at him like he's trying to read that backwards. Sherlock isn't entirely sure what he meant himself. Lestrade has a wary eye on him, and there's too much- too much everything. They all _want_ with their greedy eyes and their little minds and even if he knows where Caroline may be, Moriarty is as far from him as ever and John will never understand. John wants quiet dinners and to try and forget that the man is still out there, still as clever as Sherlock and still running circles around them all. He can't think in here.

Sherlock hands Lestrade one of the photographs from the dresser. "Find the car. The black one, in the picture. There's a warehouse, somewhere and- I have somewhere to be."

"Sherlock!" Lestrade tries to call him back.

He gets out of the house and there's a phone box on the corner. There are walls, the walls of the box and his fingers are shaking when he tries to work the phone. He sits down so he only needs to concentrate on the voice, who listens patiently as he tries to place a reverse charge call. (He had his phone, at some point, and a wallet, but they must be at the crime scene because they are not in his pocket any more.)

Mycroft doesn't bother with stupid questions. "Stay there. I'll have the car with you in five minutes."

Sherlock closes his eyes and counts.

He doesn't resist when he is pulled, efficiently but hurriedly, into the dark car.

Mycroft watches him steadily.

"Personal call," Sherlock says. "I'm touched."

"You called me," Mycroft reminds him. "Since the last recorded incident of that was five years past, forgive me for the appearance of concern."

"Yes," Sherlock says. "Sorry. Yes."

He hasn't called Mycroft for help since he was a child. (Not even with Lestrade shaking him, demanding, 'Sherlock, what did you take? Who can I call?') He doesn't want help now; he only wanted escape. Wants the perspective Mycroft might have because he is clever enough to understand.

Sherlock says, "John is a good man." Good is an ambiguous term but it seems to cover most of the things John is which Sherlock is not. His brain is filled with pieces Sherlock would have long discarded as taking up valuable space, if he had ever believed in them at all. They aren't useful tools for a detective, but John seems to think them important and Sherlock cannot see it in the same way.

"John kills people." Mycroft's expression is neutral.

"That doesn't mean he's not good."

"Of course not. But he has killed, for you."

"He wouldn't have done that before. He followed me, he said. He thinks I have a plan. He thought I knew what I was doing and we nearly died. He thinks-."

"No he doesn't," Mycroft interrupts. "Sherlock, you can't possibly have missed something so-."

"What?"

"He thinks that _he's_ protecting _you_. That's the role he sees in your… partnership. He shot a man to save your life, was that not rather a hint?"

"Yes, I know that, of course, but-."

"No. He knows you as well as anyone and he still has a somewhat melodramatic conviction that he is going to jump in front of a bullet for you. That is his decision to make."

"So my point stands. John is a good man. He could be out with normal people doing their normal boring ordinary people things. He wants that. But instead I'm going to kill him."

"Possibly," Mycroft says. "Or possibly not. It rather depends on you, now, doesn't it?" The car pulls to a stop. "I need to go back to work. There's a somewhat delicate situation developing with a pair of submarines and a nuclear warhead. Keep the car until you've calmed down, there's a good boy."

There's a fine balance in the decision: to show resentment for Mycroft's condescension by finding his own way back, or to stay in the warm dark of the car. Prudence wins. Sherlock orders the driver on a slow circuitous route back to Baker Street. They circle a few times before he makes up his mind to go in.

When he walks into the flat, his phone is sitting on the desk. Lestrade found the woman alive, apparently. John has left him a note: _Thought you might want some space so staying at Sarah's. Hope you're okay. John_.

 

* * *

John fell today. It was a daft thing - a sudden rain shower and newly damp ground, and his foot went from under him. Still sensitive skin was grazed open and everything aches as though he is an old man. It feels like when he first got back, without the familiar numbness of those weeks.

The air feels like the weather never broke, an oppressive clinging heat that may or may not have anything to do with the Met Office. Sherlock has been ducking around the flat as though he's hiding from something.

John lies awake in bed, abruptly furious and helpless and terrified. He can't get comfortable in these sheets. He kicks them off.

Touching himself is an experiment more than any real pursuit of pleasure. It means nothing except that it has been too long, and he _hurts_ and nothing about this soothes him. He has coped with bullet wounds and skin grafts but this long aching, never quite healed, has him wanting to throw things across the room.

John lies on his side, sparing the abraded skin on his back, but the rhythm is too difficult to maintain this way.

"Let me," Sherlock says. One day John is going to break the man's neck in shocked reflex, and Sherlock does not seem to care.

It cracks the air open, Sherlock settling quietly beside him on the bed. Sherlock's hand on his dick. He pushes John into a kneeling position on the bed, so Sherlock can sit behind him, reaching around.

"Sherlock, what-?"

"Never mind."

"You don't even-."

"But you do. So never mind that."

"It's not-."

"Fairness needn't be exchanged in kind, John. In my case, I would be just as happy if it isn't. You want this. I want something else. Can we please just-?"

He stops and John has no idea what was meant to come after that bewildering 'please'. He says, "All right," because it is Sherlock, and what else would he say?

Sherlock breathes out, so slowly, audible above the pounding of John's heart and the noises of the traffic outside. He presses his forehead against the bare skin of John's good shoulder. "All right," he whispers, and moves his hand.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock wonders whether John still suspects his motives. Everyone had warned him to stay away, from Donovan to Sherlock himself The two of them will never see the world in the same way, and Sherlock cannot promise anything more. John thinks that Sherlock keeps secrets from him because he can, because it's in his nature. He still sometimes thinks about the things Donovan had said about murder, and the solving of puzzles being less diverting than creating them. There is no reason to change those opinions now – even John knows that sex is no guarantee against betrayal. It can be a lie as easily as words.

They sit opposite each other in the café. John eats fried eggs and bacon with apparent enthusiasm; Sherlock drinks coffee.

The television leads with a suspected gang murder in Hackney. Sherlock closes his eyes to see how it would fit with the pattern.

John says something, interrupting the diagrams Sherlock is drawing behind his eyes.

"What?" Sherlock asks.

"He's not smarter than you," John says again. "He's a madman and a murderer and you're… you're not, Sherlock, all right?" He looks right into Sherlock's eyes as he says that, as men will do when they are lying, or suspect themselves of lying. He wants to believe it, if nothing else.

"How did you know it was one of his?" Sherlock asks. John will occasionally beat him at poker, if Sherlock agrees not to count cards. He picks things up. "Can you spot a link?"

John smiles at him, a peculiar-shaped thing. "I can't read him," he says. "Just you. When it comes to you, I'm turning into quite the expert."

"No one could…"

"No," John agrees. "It's not perfect. Just better than anyone else." John sounds as though he thinks this is an inadequate offering. It is more than Sherlock had hoped for.

 

* * *

 

John still doesn't know what Sherlock wants.

When he tells Ella this, she turns the question around, as she always does. "What do _you_ want, John?"

The answer, of course, is, "Him, mostly. Everything to heal up, and for the two of us to go back to normal. Normal for us, anyway." The honesty nearly chokes him and it's still not the whole story.

He doesn't say, "to put a bullet between Jim Moriarty's eyes, and for Sherlock not to hate me for doing it."

John doesn't tell Harry that either, when she asks what's stopping him from just _asking_ Sherlock what he wants. John tells her, "Because I'm not sure he knows," which is close enough to the truth.

He's not sure that either of them know what they want, when it comes to fine details. Sherlock is quite content to sit across the room from him without speaking; he will allow hours to pass without a single exchange, a single touch. He lies beside John in bed, one night in three, curled up with his back to John. And yet if John leaves to get a glass of water, or to turn up the heating, when he gets back Sherlock is watching the door.

Sherlock will crowd John in a crime scene, tugging at his coat and pulling him across the room; in their own flat he will stare at John for long minutes before suddenly, without provocation, taking hold of his hand. Sometimes he drops it after a second or two, sometimes they sit together on the sofa while John watches the television and Sherlock mocks it.

It's all entirely unpredictable but then Sherlock generally is. If John can read him better than anyone else, it is only because the standard of comprehension overall is abysmally low. John pays attention, that's all.

"Does it matter, John?" Sherlock asks. Sherlock pays attention too.

John doesn't look over his shoulder, to where Sherlock is sitting at the desk. He waits, and a few minutes later he has company on the sofa. "Does what matter?" John asks.

"Labels," Sherlock says. He wrinkles his nose. "Reasons why. That's what you're sitting there thinking about, instead of writing up this latest case."

"It's useful, that's all," John says. "Helps to manage expectations. No one gets… confused."

Sherlock takes John's hand. He smoothes over the rough skin of John's knuckles and says, "Because my hands still shake, sometimes, and yours never do anymore."

"Sherlock."

"Because Moriarty wanted my full attention and so he sent you to me, wrapped in explosives."

"Anyone would-."

"No. Anyone would have had your full attention. Not mine. I'm not like other people, John."

"I know that."

"So does it matter? Is it important to have a name, to have a reason? I can show you the working, John, but it may not seem so impressive when you can see all of the moving parts. Few things are. People prefer… mystery."

"I'm not like other people either," John reminds him. He quirks a smile. "You always impress me. But no, it doesn't matter. I don't need you to tell me anything. I can work it out. I'll get there in the end."

"And in the meantime?"

"I'm not going anywhere."

Sherlock's phone rings; he answers it with his eyes on John. "Sherlock Holmes. Lestrade… oh… yes, all right… twenty-five minutes." He hangs up. "John?"

"Case?"

Sherlock is already shrugging on his coat. "Are you coming?"

"If you want me to."

The expression is exasperated. "Yes. Of course. Always. _Come with me_."

John follows after Sherlock down the stairs. This is what Sherlock wants, after all of that. John beside him, and the case in front. John would have given more, and will. For now he does what Sherlock asks, and goes with him into the streets.


End file.
